


Flags

by Kemmasandi



Series: Flags [8]
Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers: Prime
Genre: Family Fluff, Mechpreg, Other, Sparklings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-10-22
Updated: 2013-10-22
Packaged: 2017-12-30 03:50:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1013743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kemmasandi/pseuds/Kemmasandi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aphelion comes around again, and this time Ratchet has a family with which to share it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Flags

**Author's Note:**

> **Title:** Flags  
>  **Rating:** K  
>  **Universe:** TF:Prime [postwar AU]  
>  **Characters/Pairings:** Optimus Prime/Ratchet,  
>  **Content Advisory:** Past mechpreg, extreme fluff, headcanons ahoy, and a giant robot version of what may or may not be breastfeeding.  >:D
> 
>  
> 
> _“Imagine your OTP celebrating their child’s first holiday together. Bonus points if it’s a gift-giving holiday and they’re helping the child open its presents!”_
> 
>  
> 
> There was a prompt on imagineyourOTP. I died of cute, and while I was out my muse had a field day coming up with headcanons. This resulted in the creation of a whole new continuity amongst my headverses – a happy one, this time. :)
> 
> Lyrics at the chapter headings are taken from _Hands Up!_ by Kota Shinzato, AKA the happiest song in the whole damn world.
> 
> * * *
> 
> **> > Cybertronian Units of Time:**
> 
>  
> 
> \- _Vorn_ – Orbital cycle; Cybertronian year. [roughly 83 Terran years]  
>  \- _Lunar Cycle_ – Cybertronian month. 26 lunar cycles in a vorn. [three years and four months]  
>  \- _Quartex_ – Cybertronian week. 4 quartexes in a lunar cycle. [Roughly 10 months]  
>  \- _Orn_ – Rotational cycle; Cybertronian day. 23 or so orns in a quartex. [Roughly a fortnight]  
>  \- _Joor_ – Cybertronian hour. 52 joors in an orn, give or take. [roughly 6 and a half Terran hours.]
> 
> \- _Aphelion_ is the celebration of the Cybertronian midwinter, the point in the planet’s orbital path at which it is farthest from its sun. It falls between Pallas Day and the Full-Vorn holiday [the official New Year, though Aphelion is in fact a better marker] and is one of the most spiritual events on the public calendar. It lasts for three orns, during which time mecha visit friends, family and clade and pay their respects to family patrons and local or national heroic figures at dedicated shrines. Parents give their sparklings gifts, the traditional choices of which are a certain type of simple doll and a small amount of credits. Stalls overflow with energon treats, and in the evening fireworks are lit. It’s considered a mark of status to be able to sponsor a large public show, so often before the war Towersmecha who otherwise didn’t give a scrap about the common people would put on massive displays of pyrotechnic brilliance free of charge.

* * *

_今すぐにもっと HANDS UP! そう夢を唄って_  
ずっと STAND UP! 折れない旗かかげ  
何度だって 壁を越えたんだ  
止まらずに さあ行こう! __

* * *

__FIRST ORN_ _

Ratchet arrived home late in the midnight shift, so tired he could barely see straight let alone walk. He’d taken the late night shuttle across town from the hospital – he wasn’t going to risk driving in this state.

He found his way to the berthroom he shared with Optimus via a sadly well-developed tactile map of their apartment, his optics having given up the ghost just inside the threshold. They had very little on their walls, which was fortunate in hindsight or at least half of it would have been on the ground by now. Something crunched underfoot as he passed through the living room – by Primus, he hoped that wasn’t a datapad. Or a rust stick. Persephone had taken to leaving them around lately. She’d ask for one, then scant minutes later something out the windows or on the vidscreen would catch her attention; she’d put the stick down to watch, and forget all about it. (Ratchet still hadn’t forgiven Optimus for the time he’d let him walk around for half a shift with one stuck to his aft.) 

He bullied his optical systems back online and just made it to the berth before his hydraulics shut off in self-preservation. Optimus was already there; soundly in recharge, systems quiet and field flickering every so often in soft little dreams. His vents puffed warm air, which condensed into white vapour as soon as it left his body. The room was cold. Optimus was probably cold as well, seeing as he’d somehow balled the entire shuttle-sized thermoblanket into a pile and wrapped himself around it rather than the other way around. 

Ratchet half-climbed, half-collapsed onto the berth beside him, wriggling into the gap between his arms and prying the blanket from his hands. Optimus gave a little sigh, expression tightening into the tiniest, sleepiest frown. Even with half his cortex actively trying to push him into enforced stasis lock it made Ratchet’s spark quicken, soft affection bleeding through his field.

He shook his head, straightening out the blanket until it covered as much of the berth as he could reach. The frown faded away. Optimus’ pedes still stuck out the bottom, but that was more or less usual with a mech his size.

Ratchet shuttered his optics, his servo curling around Optimus’ as his higher processors fell offline. Sleep was quick to claim him.

He was woken barely a shift later when their daughter came racing into the room at an unholy hour of the dawn shift. 

It wasn’t her pedefalls that woke him – although Persephone did have a talent for making much more noise at high speeds than a sparkling her size ought to be able to. It was the dreaded bellyflop.

“Dad! Dad! Dad!! Wake up!!” 

There was a solid clang and a gleeful squeal. Ratchet’s autonomics tried to throw himself upright, but since he was still coming out of recharge at the time he barely made it to a confused squat. A small weight rolled off his belly and into the gap between his thigh and Optimus, screebling excitedly.

Ratchet’s engine made a sick clank, fanbelts whirring. Gravity struck. He flopped backwards with a heartfelt groan, feeling twice his own weight. 

Optimus brushed a gentle servo over his forehelm. His field reached out, potent and calming. Down between them, Persephone attempted to mimic the reassuring gesture, but her little arms were still very short and so, in her imperturbable fashion, she settled for rubbing Ratchet’s grill instead. It tickled. Ratchet made an ungraceful noise.

The caress broke off abruptly. Judging by the flood of newspark chittering, Optimus had picked Persephone up. 

“Dad wa?” she asked, rapidly and repeatedly. “Dad okay?” 

“I’m fine, just leave me here to die,” Ratchet groaned, mustering the energy to online his optics. “I didn’t get in until late midnight last night.”

Optimus’ EM field went warm amber in sympathy. “Rest a while,” he suggested, while their daughter chattered away in his arms. “I will bring you energon.” 

Ratchet raised a hand in a floppy wave, pushing gratitude through his field. His optics onlined just in time to catch the softest of smiles grace Optimus’ lips as his mate rose up with unfair grace for someone so early in the morning and vanished into the main living room.

Ratchet blinked a couple of times, staring blearily up at the ceiling. “Optimus?” he called out.

“Yes, Ratchet?” came the reply. “Would you rather plain or mid-grade energon to start with?”

“I think today is a mid-grade day,” he said mournfully. Was it just him, or could he hear Optimus talking back to Persephone’s eager babbling? The strains of a rumbled sentence was just audible through the connecting rooms. “Optimus, is there any particular reason why she chose to wake us so early?”

Of that sentence, Persephone understood exactly two words – ‘wake’ and ‘today’. She started warbling again. Ratchet could hear her even though two open doors.

“Today’s the first day of Aphelion,” Optimus called above her babbling. “It’s her first public holiday. It is no wonder she is so excited.”

Ratchet picked up the sound of his steps before Optimus came back into view, balancing three cubes of energon and a bag of gelled treats in one hand and Persephone in the other. He sat on the edge of the berth, tucking one leg neatly under the other and setting the cubes down on the mesh surface. 

Ratchet plumped the pillows behind him and wrapped the thermoblanket around his shoulders, baring his thoracic plating. Persephone settled herself in his lap and waited, yellow optics bright. His plating folded back, carrier protocols bringing his feeding lines to the front. He scooped his daughter into his arms and threaded one much-chewed line loose; she clamped her tiny servos around it and latched on, suckling greedily.

Optimus offered Ratchet a cube, smiling, a flash of something tantalising in the glimmer of his optics. Ratchet met his gaze and raised curious brows, but the aroma of the midgrade distracted him. He downed the first cube in two gulps. When he turned to the second one, Optimus had it waiting with a knowing smile. Ratchet replied with a daring smirk, and drained half the cube.

His thirst mostly slaked, Ratchet swirled the rest in the perspex, watching the grains of his mineral supplements circle around the bottom. For the first three chords of his pregnancy he’d maintained that they added a sour note to the taste of good mid-grade, but sometime during the fourth he had come to the sudden realisation that if it had indeed had a different taste before, he couldn’t remember it. This had shaken his confidence.

“I’d thought Aphelion was next quartex,” he said at length. “Weren’t we going to visit Firestar’s Tower?”

“It is one of many options,” Optimus said, shaking his helm – though not in rejection of the idea. “Wheeljack, Smokescreen and Bulkhead have planned a celebration for the evening shift. I believe Bumblebee and Knock Out will be attending it also. At midday I am required to make an address to the nation, but I do not anticipate that taking long.” He reached out, stroking long fingers down the curve of Persephone’s helm. She detached herself from Ratchet’s line long enough to warble up at them, then went back to fueling. 

Optimus’ smile opened, became a grin. “We have the morning shift to ourselves. I suggest we avail ourselves of the holiday specialties before the streets become as crowded as they were last vorn.”

“That might be sensible,” Ratchet agreed. He gave the last of his midgrade a pensive look, then downed it, grimacing. Whether or not it had always been that way, there was something about those additives that just didn’t taste right. “I want to see First Aid and Greenlight later, but I may have to leave Persephone with you. I don’t want to run the risk of Lancer being there at the same time.”

Tiny fists kneaded at the hollow of his chest. “I Sefi. Wanna ikoko Dad wa.” There was a small silence, and then a metallic burp. Ratchet looked past the open spread of his plating, and had to laugh. That was a lot of expression for one small face; mouth open, optics wide and tiny brows drawn thunderously low, Persephone looked the picture of absolute affront.

“Yes, that’s you,” Ratchet chuckled, detaching his lines from her bundled fists and passing her into Optimus’ arms. “You can’t come with me, I’m afraid. Lancer and I do not get along well. Optimus will look after you instead.”

Judging by the look on Optimus’ face – absolutely besotted would not be too strong a description – the mech who had once been Prime had absolutely no problem with that.

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> Persephone’s babytalk was really hard to write, because it’s not just gibberish – in my headcanon sparklings start out with a simple preprogrammed language that’s based on the base coding inheritance common to every mech ever. As they grow they gradually learn the dominant language or languages of wherever they’re growing up, and phase out of using the newspark binary, but it’s a gradual process. Persephone’s at the stage in this fic where she’s starting to use simple Protihexi [that’s what Ratch and Opti are speaking ;D] but the majority of her communication is still in binary.
> 
> Ratchet carried her. Optimus no longer has functional gestation systems.


End file.
